That in the age of AI, we work for a world where our humanity becomes deepened rather than diminished, while not acceding to AI.
Following a number of informal chats, in August 2025 Wally O’Neill of Wexford’s Red Books asked Eamonn Parker if he would host an open meeting about concerns around Artificial Intelligence. Wally advertised, and the first Red Books AI Conversation took place on Thursday 11th September. This generated some interest, and Wally asked Eamonn to host a second one.
At the end of the second Red Books AI Conversation on Wednesday 24th September, there was a general desire among many who attended that, while these conversations were worth continuing, something more by way of community awareness-raising and support around this technology was worth pursuing.
Our meetings are open and take place on Thursday evenings at 8pm in Red Books, St Peter’s Square, Wexford Town in the south east of Ireland (Y35 ER2F).
These conversations are conducted in a spirit of respectful listening, where every voice has an equal opportunity to be heard and no voices dominate. This is essentially the spirit of Sociocracy, whose 20th-century origins trace back to a Quaker educationalist and a Dutch businessman in Holland in the 1930s.
Connect Again — Deepening our Humanity in the Age of AI. Thursday evenings, 7–8pm on WNPMR (Wexford New People’s Movement Radio), streaming from Red Books, St Peter’s Square, Wexford Town.
To tune in, visit begerin.radioca.st/stream on your phone or computer between 7 and 8pm on a Thursday.
A note on the stream: WNPMR is a completely voluntary non-profit station, still in its infancy with the occasional teething problem. It does not broadcast continuously — only for the duration of each programme. If you visit the stream link outside of broadcast hours, you will see “This page isn’t working right now”. That’s expected. It is hoped that programmes will be downloadable in the future for later listening.
Eamonn grew up in Kildare and spent most of his career in Adult Education and Prison Education, with Maths and Computers as his main subjects. In 2017 he moved to Wexford after going half-time in his job. He retired in 2022 and has followed developments in AI for a number of years. He now has time to follow some of his passions, including music, sustainability and community.
Our theme music is the Prelude from Bach’s 1st Cello Suite in G major, played by Philip Milman — a piece composed by a human musical genius 300 years ago and played by an accomplished and generous human, on a very beautiful human instrument said to be a close male complement to the violin (often considered close to the female human voice).
Philip has made this recording freely available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence.
What is Artificial Intelligence — AI? And how do we retain our humanity in the face of all the large changes in the world?
The internet provides numerous definitions for Artificial Intelligence. On our WNPMR radio show, we hope to bring this topic a bit more down-to-earth, as best we can.
Neither of our regular presenters are experts, but we maintain a keen interest in both scepticism around AI and developments in the technology itself, as well as attempting to keep a fairly broad perspective on the world and the challenge of being the best humans that we can be.
Over time, we hope to bring in other members of our group with their own variety of experience and expertise, as well as other members of the wider community in Wexford and beyond, to enrich and deepen our experience of being human in these rapidly changing times.
For those who like to keep up with the latest developments:
A better future with technology is possible. The Center for Humane Technology is a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that today’s most consequential technologies actually serve humanity.
Their roadmap:
Nate Hagens — The Great Simplification is a podcast exploring the systems science underpinning the human predicament: ecology, economics, energy, geopolitics, human behaviour, and monetary/financial systems.
Particularly significant pieces from April and May 2026: